


At The End

by Rainwater_Apothecary



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games), Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - Fandom
Genre: Flashbacks, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, Post-Apocalypse, at times haha, occassional gore, written post vlr pre ztd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 14:27:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11163756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainwater_Apothecary/pseuds/Rainwater_Apothecary
Summary: The hellish 9 hours are over. Time for some much needed rest and review.Only one knows what the future will truly hold.





	1. Review

Junpei’s head had grown increasingly heavy over the course of the evening. Yet, each time he felt the muscles tense at the base of his neck, the boy snapped right back into consciousness.  


After all, the memories of the last [9 hours] weren’t going to go away just because they had all escaped the [Nevada Testing Facility].  


Although it was becoming harder and harder to keep his eyelids open as the voices of the other survivors washed over him. Settling back into the black metal chair the strange woman and her accomplices had offered him and his companions, the events of the last day sluggishly tore themselves through his now-fuzzy vision.  


The desert. The sound of six bracelets hitting the warm concrete beneath the escaping group as the harsh sunlight burned their eyes and their lungs choked on the rising sands.  


Yes, six bracelets. Junpei winced at the memory of their lost comrades.  


[The 9th Man] … [Kubota]… the memory of his demise brought bile to the back of Junpei’s throat.  


[Santa] … [Aoi Kurashiki] … [Zero]. The one who had brought Junpei and the others to the testing facility in order to pit them against one another and force them into solving puzzles all in order to save a much younger  


[June] … [Akane Kurashiki] … [Kanny]… Well, he was glad to have been able to save the girl he’d grown up with, and to be honest, relieved to finally know what had happened to his childhood playmate.  


None of that, however, forgave the siblings for their torturous past 9 hours.  


9 people’s lives on the line. No, Junpei thought, that wasn’t entirely accurate.  


[Two others] lost their lives on board the fake [Gigantic].  


“Junpei! Alice still had some questions for you! Don’t tell me you’re nodding off already?”  


“Come now, Clover. Not everyone in the present company has played the nonary game twice, remember?”  


“Humph.”  


Snake’s calm voice hummed in the back of Junpei’s skull as he pried his eyes open once more to see the Field siblings bickering quietly as the strange woman loomed above the college student (well, drop out, he mused. He wonder how long he’d been gone…) as he ruffled his hair and sat up straighter.  


[Alice]. Now that she was back in her business suit and had finished combing the sand from her thick black hair, the FBI agent had set about the task of debriefing the five survivors on exactly where her investigation had led her and how this involved them.  
Junpei seemed to have begun nodding off just as the imposing woman had summed up her travels and neatly tied up her reasoning behind the skimpy outfit she had been wearing when Clover had nearly mowed her down.  


“It was thanks to you, however, that we caught [Hongou] at all. [Cradle] was too well connected of a corporation that the only way to take it down would have to go in from inside and strike the iron while it was still hot.”  


Her cool eyes registered [Light]’s tensed shoulders at her use of fire metaphors. The female agent’s manner softened before she continued down a different track.  


“But I take it that that’s just half of the whole story, yes?” Knowing eyes moved across five jarringly different individuals in increasingly ridiculous states. [Lotus] gripped one arm and paled, answering in her shaky state for the rest of them.  


“It….it was a lot. A lot to take in.” Alice blinked, clearly recalculating the group’s fragile states. With a grating noise that left the entire gang wincing or clenching their jaws, Alice pushed her metal seat back from the table they’d all gathered around and gave out quick orders.  


Clothes. Showers. Meals.  


Then they would continue their chat.  


If that was alright by them.  


Junpei’s ragged form managed a shrug in answer to the inquiry. They’d figure it out later.  


“Hey, maybe you’ll wash the ugly off of you, Seven!” The tall man only smirked and shook his head at the girl’s forced levity.  


No one mentioned her death grip on her brother’s prosthetic arm.  


If Alice or the other agents noticed the group’s quick outcry at letting the grey-haired teen near the tiled room that contained bathing implements, none of them let on.  


+++  


Junpei would be the first to admit that it was just as odd to see Lotus or [Mrs. Kashiwabara] all dressed up as it was to see their resident prince all dressed down.  


“What? Haven’t you ever seen a lady in a sweater before? God you’re all pigs!” A resounding beat-down sounded from the main room in the bunker Alice had directed the group to a ways off from the sand basin they’d emerged into.  


With Clover’s help (read as: devil-may-care driving) they reached the outpost easily enough and had been slowly piecing their bearings back together again.  


Yanking a clean t-shirt over his damp locks, Junpei willed his hands to stop shaking as they smoothed the cloth over his dangerously protruding ribs.  


Deep breaths.  


In…Out….In….  


…  


……  


Out.  


Over the barriers the agents had erected for the five of them to pretend at decency with, the college student tried to let the sounds of his companions, his blessedly alive companions, sooth the sharp edges of his nerves. Everywhere he looked, he had seen blood.  


Blood, sinews, thick fat dripping… He shook his head.  


They were _alive_. He’d plugged in the passcode to the coffin that held Snake _himself_. Junpei raised his left arm to investigate it further beneath the dim light that filtered through the building’s skylights.  


Hey, any natural light was good enough for him.  


And the fresh air!  


Dry, desert air rose from every possible corner of the building they resided in and brought beads of sweat to Junpei’s sickly looking limb.  


It looked oddly small and breakable without the dangerous hunk of metal that he’d sickeningly grown accustomed to over the last…  


But how long _was_ it? How had he known Snake’s password? How had he crossed timelines like that?  


_“A river”_ Akane had said.  


Fuck if he understood any of that.  


Scrubbing his fists against the canvas of his chinos in an impulsive motion to rid them of non-existent blood, Junpei caught his thoughts as they began to churn out of control.  


“ _FUCK._ ” The curse had exited his lips much louder than he had intended, but it felt good.  


_Fuck timelines, fuck death, fuck the fucking nonary game! Fuck Aka-  
_

His eyes widened as he caught himself throwing a punch at the mesh screen that separated him from someone else’s changing room.  


“Junpei?” The voice that came through the curtain wasn’t insensed as it might have been, seeings how he immediately knew the source of the voice. Clover’s soft call was surprisingly gentle and laced with concern.  


That’s when it began.  


The thick smell of copper filled the back of Junpei’s sinuses, clogging his mouth, his throat, the backs of his eyeballs. _Blood_.  


Limbs and faces and scattered weapons flew past his drying eyes bringing corpses that now called to him from the other side of the divider.  


They were alive. He _knew_ they were alive.  


They’d never died at all.  


Their damned bracelets didn’t even have detonators in them to begin with!  


Clothing slithered to the floor and stopped with a thump against the rough floor as Junpei’s legs gave out underneath him.  


“Kid I don’t care if you’re decent or not, we’ve got the same junk and I’m coming in.” Metal and canvas clasped into a large hand as the very full figure of Seven forced it’s way into the cubicle their [5] player had just fallen in. “Shit.”  


“Oh my god, Junpei!” A fast ball of pink hair bobbed past the thick man’s waist and smothered the sobbing man’s face in her shirt.  


With shaking limbs, her leader gripped at the edge of the girl’s loose shirt. It was a simple material, probably from the same package as his own, seeings as they were both designed for burn victims or trauma survivors. But it was good enough. Her warmth, her tears. They were _real._  


This was not a girl who could raise an axe to the back of someone’s head. This was the girl who laughed and cried and pursed her lips at his bad jokes.  


She was alive.  


Through his downpour of tears, Junpei felt his body releasing its frustration, its rage, its tension, its despair… it was cathartic. He wished the current of emotion would just rip itself from his chest in one go so that after this embarrassing display he would feel nothing.  


Remember nothing, if he was lucky.  


But… they’d been through that with the big guy, hadn’t they? Amnesia sure wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, honestly.  


Even as he felt the tears fall, new sensations like starbursts shone along his arms and the small of his back.  


Distantly, through the fog of screams and chapped lips and choking breaths, he heard movements and small impacts against the screens and the ground by his sides.  


The lone field agent clicked purposefully across the cool interior of the compound and almost dropped her clipboard at what she saw.  


[Seven] surrounding a heap of bodies with [Lotus] against his chest, her arms interlocking with [Snake]’s as he held his sobbing sister. And in the middle of it all, [Clover] sat on [Junpei]’s legs and crushed him into her shoulder as he twisted the fabric of her shirttail as [Lotus] mirrored his motion in the back of his own shirt.  


_What had these people gone through?_  


++ 

“Well, you know in all those secret agent movies they always sleep back-to-back, right?” Junpei hated to rain on the big guy’s parade, but Clover had no such qualms.  


“They _stand_ back to back, Seven.” It was good to see the saucy girl repeat her signature hands-on-hips-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-stare-combo with lighter clothes and a lighter spirit now that she was safe.  


Now that they’d saved her.  


_They’d all saved each other._ Junpei mused, his features softening as he brought his pillow up beneath his chin.  


Lotus was the super genius who’d unlocked not only Clover’s prison back in the [Laboratory] but she had also activated the Sudoku puzzle that had eventually allowed them all to escape the [Incinerator].  


Even Akane.  


Seven was the cop who knew the building like the back of his hand and was the one man who could truly point the finger at Gentarou Hongou and the rest of their ilk.  


Clover had pickpocketed her way through the ship and given Junpei hope even when he thought he’d hurt her irreparably. And then there were her jokes. Junpei smiled in rememberance.  


Snake was probably the only reason they solved the last three rooms, to be honest. After all, who the hell else would have an entire library of obscure volumes as well as the entirety of the morse code alphabet memorized? Bastard. Smart bastard. Junpei was so glad he was alive.  


Junpei… well, Junpei had been the reason they’d all been dragged into this whole mess and thus it was the best he could do to drag them all out of it.  


[Morphogenic Field] huh. That explained the numbers and the Truth had Gone bullshit…but what about the images and the flashbacks he was having? Those hadn’t actually happened, had they?  


Had they?  


Shaking his head to clear it, the musing escapee-come-clairvoyant put a hand on his head as the friendly bickering filtered back to the foreground of his attentions. A friendly bump to his shoulder brought his eyes around to his blind companion.  


It was still weird as balls to see him in a white shirt and flannel pajama bottoms like some normal human being.  


“’My eyes are up here.’ I believe is the colloquial that is most appropriate at this moment.”  


“ _D-DUDE._ ” The grey-haired youth chuckled at his friend’s splutterings before continuing.  


“You’re seeing things from back then, aren’t you?” Junpei paled.  


“Aren’t you?” The man tilted his head to one side, his jawline catching the light.  


“In my own way. Although, that’s not what I meant.” His visage darkened. “You tapped into the field for hours on end. Even I can see that you’re shaken.”  


Junpei let that joke slide uncontested as his shoulders slumped. “Is…yeah, yeah I am. And it sucks.” Snake made a hum of agreement.  


“Clover and I…” The blind boy’s lips thinned as he pressed them into a thin line. “We have…experience… in this matter, Junpei.”  


A sigh he didn’t know he’d been holding in released itself from the brunette’s cracked lips.  


_That was true. The Field siblings **had** done exactly what he had, nine years ago.  
_

_God, it must have been awful.  
_

A stolen glance at the other man rewarded Junpei with a rather sickly-looking Snake ‘staring’ in the direction of his younger sibling’s laughter.  


_He looks so old._ But…it wasn’t like the man was all that senior to him in years. Junpei sighed.  


“You did good, Snake.” Silver eyebrows raised in surprise at the intimacy of the remark. “You…You got her through _two_ fuckery games. I can’t…I can’t imagine it.”  


Between one blink and the next it appeared to Junpei that his words had broken something held deep within his strong companion and then filled the spaces left with something much brighter, much more. It straightened his spine out of pride, where tension and worry had been bouying it prior.  


“Thank you, Junpei.” For the first time, the slouching teenager didn’t feel his companion’s brusqueness as an insult. This time it was confident.  


This time, it left a thoughtful smirk tugging at the corners of the other man’s pale lips.  


“Okay but I get dibs on the not gross boys.”  


“And what’s that supposed to mean? Brat!”  


“Ah yes, I believe Clover has just prostituted us out. Shall we see what for?” Well, it was nice to have that transparency with Snake, even if it was over as soon as it had begun.  


_“What?”_ Tumbling after the taller youth’s confident strides, the two made their way back to their pink haired rapscallion of a friend.  


In the end, the five of them agreed to sleep in shifts, piling their bedding into an alcove that _didn’t_ resemble the claustrophobic cell-like bedrooms they’d been gifted by the federal workers. They had seen enough of cells and small rooms and separation to last a lifetime.  


Tonight, at least, they would keep an eye on one another, and the other eye out for danger or the reoccurrence of anyone, male or female, wearing a gas mask. Junpei’s were not the only arms raised to gooseflesh at the thought.  


Tucked up tight between one sibling and the other, after all Clover _had_ ‘claimed them’, the Reciever shifted in his increasingly heated bedclothes and tried to blink the night air from his eyes. The rigidity of the man on his right alerted him to the fact that he was not the only one finding it difficult to sleep, regardless of agreements.  


Clover, thankfully, seemed to drift off as soon as she had gotten herself into a cosy enough knot of limbs, blankets, and her male companions. _Trauma effected them all differently, he guessed,_ stifling a yawn.  


At some point during the long, twilit night Junpei dropped off to exhausted depths of sleep, for in the early morning light his dust-encrusted eyes snapped open and his heart pounded at his ribs as he shot up into a seated position.  


His sudden movements did not go unnoticed by those around him.  


“Look who’s awake!” Seven’s scarred face lit up as he wished them all his good-mornings.  


“Junpei, don’t move so much, some of us are trying to sleep!” Junpei’s left leg froze mid kick as he recognized the tangled braids of the woman using his knee as extra leverage beneath her pillow.  


Lotus was the one woman he would never want to wake on the wrong side of the bed.  


Hers wasn’t the only complaint his sharp reactions illicited, however. Over Clover’s groans Junpei caught a sharp intake of breath quickly followed by a tight “Good morning to you as well.”  


“Shit, sorry!” A man can only lose people so many times before he wakes up clutching their shirts, apparently. “Wait…” Junpei narrowed his eyes, scouring each face that surrounded him, slowly catalogueing every painstaking detail through the pounding in his ears from his rude awakening.  


Small fingers closing themselves over the folds above Junpei’s abdomen brought his glance back down to the sleeping cherub buried into his side.  


Struggling to free his hand from its protective grip on the elder sibling while keeping still enough to not rouse the women, he breathed “You’re all alive.”  


The other men’s faces softened.


	2. Rivers and Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junpei and the Fields face the world with all their wounds laid bare.
> 
> Remember, for this one I didn't know Junpei was already bilingual so imagine him with a really thick Japanese accent.   
> My son is adorable. 
> 
> "川", "kawa"; a river or stream.

“Light…?” The name felt odd on the Japanese man’s tongue as he tried it out.  


“Yes, Junpei. Just because you and my sister share your codenames with your birthnames does not, sadly, make my name [Snake].”  


“Awww, come on Light! He’s so cute for trying! Isn’t he?” Clover beamed at the struggling foreigner.  


“I doubt ‘cute’ is the term I would use, Clover.” Snake, no, Light Field sighed, crossing his arms before his younger sibling rolled out her sleeping bag.  


“Well _I_ think he’s cute so you can-“  


“G-geez guys I don’t think making fun of someone’s native language is _cute_.” The pink haired teen glanced over at the struggling member of their impromptu sleepover.  


“But you do it so _well_ , Junpei!” Someday he would wrap his head around how fluent the two of them were in both Japanese and the choppy, overly emotive language they called English. Junpei knew it by another name, but every time he labelled things in the language he was born to, the younger Field would just smirk in that way that she had.  


It effectively shut him up each time, his cheeks warming in both unbiased admiration for the cute younger girl and in unabashed embarrassment at his previously unforeseen shortcomings.  


Snake’s shrug brought him back to the issue at hand once more.  


As the thick futon-like sleeping sacks bloomed onto the floor side by side, Junpei rose to put his hands on his hips, thoughtfully.  


_“We’re sleeping like the kanji for ‘river’ and you can’t stop it.” Light had shaken his head in exasperation at the girl’s fervor for the idea, but as the three of them had absolutely no interest in parting ways, the boys gave in to their achilies’ heel and grabbed almost-forgotten bedrolls from the closets of the Field’s home.  
_

_Junpei had looked around the place in wonder as Light had felt for the mixture of flannel and polyester that heralded what Clover had sent them to look for. He knew, in theory, that Western-style houses were different, in fact he’d visited some…but still, this house was fucking massive and really freaking clean. Not that it was all that surprising, knowing Snake, but after the past few weeks bouncing from outpost to outpost after escaping the purposely aged Gigantic replica, a spotless house was intimidating. He’d had time to shift his socked feet uncomfortably before a blue roll of fabric had hit him in the chest.  
_

_Oof. He’d exclaimed before they made their way back down the carpeted stairs to where Clover had set up base camp in their living room.  
_

_The decision had been reached quickly, after simmering in the background of all of their minds during those grueling three weeks with Alice and her organization. Not that it had taken Junpei and the rest of his single-citizenship friends long to realize just how stranded and far away from their homes they had been brought. Details like location, while interesting, were not of the utmost importance when fighting for their lives.  
_

_Now safe on solid ground, the reality of their predicament took front and center.  
_

_Although, over sinking to their deaths on a replica of a replica of the most ill-fated cruise ship in history, not having a green card, while disconcerting, barely made a blip on the survivors’ radars.  
_

_Alice had been able to pull together some sort of ‘refugee’ status for the three of them (although she’d be keeping Hongou for her own judicial grilling before deporting him to face the same fate back home in the land of his birth), and as Lotus and Seven had families and duties on the other side of the ocean, they leapt at the chance.  
_

_They also had strings they could pull. Lotus had worked in the US back in her programmer days and as such had a working passport, even if it had been left in japan. Seven had something similar enough for jazz as a law enforcement officer, so the FBI granted him ‘consultant’ status on the kidnapping case and managed to get him back to his outfit back home.  
_

_Junpei was a college student who didn’t even know where his family had gotten off to, let alone how long he’d been gone.  
_

_The entire process was daunting and he had no clue how to even start a journey that would just plop him thousands of miles away and surround him with people who had no idea what he’d been through and why, whenever he slept heavily enough, he thought of dancers with stab wounds in their backs and charring ceremonial robes.  
_

_He must have seemed particularly pale when the date finally arrived for Lotus and Seven to take off. They had promised to travel together and Lotus, at least, said that she could put off a few days therapy in order to get back to her girls.  
_

_Snake and Clover had both given their love to Nona and Ennea. Seven had looked mildly surprised at the revelation, once they’d filled Lotus in on the events of the past nine years and her own puzzle piece slid into place.  
_

_Seven decided to escort her back home, and to give his regards to his young friends of nine years ago. He had laughed about how much they must have grown and judging from the homesick face of Lotus, they all knew it had been so.  
_

_“He can just stay with us!” The girl had leapt into the air in excitement. “I mean, I’m not super psyched to go back home to our guard dogs and our parents alone.”  
_

_Snake’s face at the prospect sealed the deal.  
_

Thus he was spending the night, well, one of many nights, in the Field sibling’s living room. True to Clover’s demands, the two remaining sleeping bags lined themselves up in full Kawa glory, one on either side of Clover’s tonight.  


Each night they changed who they flanked in the middlemost sleeping space.  


Besides, by that point the three had grown used to the sounds of five people sleeping in one space, so the silence left behind would have been petrifying atop of the omnipresent terror that upon waking they’’d find themselves in a cabin filled with bunkbeds and two multi-colored suitcases. The thought made Junpei shudder, and judging from the way Clover moaned and cried out in her sleep and the way Light’s arms shook when he thought no one was looking, the three wouldn’t need to explain their reasons for their unorthodox close-quarter setup.  


Although it was only when Clover awoke screaming her brother’s obsolete codename and said brother would wake repeatedly during the night just to throw his arms into the air to remind himself that he was safe in a room much larger than a shoebox that Junpei realized their charity was not just for his sake.  


He was the oddity that made their waking hours real. They’d been captured together, twice, and placed in the same cabin onboard the- well, in building Q during the second nonary game. If it was just the two of them, their nightmares would take longer to disappate into the cool night air than if there was a third.  


Especially a third they hadn’t known prior to their 9 hours of hell and the following weeks of debriefing, sharing, and sleep aiding medications.  


He was their abnormal, their pinch in the side that let them know that they were truly awake and free.  


It was when Clover had dreamt of the [Hospital Room] and Junpei had dreamt of the [Incinerator] _again_ that the sleeping sections had begun drifting closer to one another. Light had commented on their vice grips around his chest when he awoke and attempted to move his arms only to hit the two in their ribs, but he hadn’t asked them to move.  


After all, it wasn’t just Junpei and Clover who whimpered in the middle of the night when the clock on the wall clicked slowly from eleven thirty to two am, putting the threat of a stranger wreathed in white fog off for one more day. They had all been captured around midnight, after all, so in a way this window was their security blanket. Their plunge into freezing water only to be saved around two am, because she, he, they, Akane and Aoi, wouldn’t come to steal them away after one am. It wasn’t their modus operandi.  


That didn’t mean that the sound of the taller man stifling a sob in his sleep got any easier to hear though.  


+++  


“Junpei, what the hell are you doing?” The man even cursed in sober, condescending tones.  


“Just checking something, stop moving.”  


“Mmph, what’re you-“ Sleep’s hazes fled the bright eyes of the pinned man’s sibling as she took in what they were up to. “Junpei what the hell are you doing?” Despite her squeaking tone Junpei couldn’t help but snort in amusement at the two’s choice of words.  


“Your eyes really are battleship gray. Uh. Steel grey? Something like that.” The teenager wiped his hands on his pants self-consciously and sat back, allowing his formerly-trapped friend to sit up and rub his unseeing eyes.  


“If you had wanted to ogle me, you could have had the decency to wait until I was awake and alert.” Pale eyelids blinked slumber from said storm tinted gazes, however futile the motion would have been, as the blind boy was facing a wall.  


“They’re really pretty, aren’t they Junpei?” The Japanese youth hadn’t liked the implications the girl’s tone had taken on so soon upon waking.  


“Y-yeah.” His own brown eyes roamed the furniture that had been pushed closer to the walls each day when the three had required more room to move about.  


_Much prettier when not tinted by flickering oranges and reds and-_ Clover’s face fell and she’d crawled most of the way over her brother’s bedding by the time the brown-haired boy realized that there were tears tracking down his face. They itched his nose when they pooled by his nostril.  


“Junpei? Junpei, what is it? We’re here, it’s okay.” The girl in the white skin-tight sleeping clothes touched her friend’s face with gentle fingers, repeating softly the words she’d woven together as her go-to whenever one of them broke down.  


He shook his head as phantom heat began to warm his face and the spot beneath the base of his skull began to throb with a piercing pain. The smell of Seven’s clothes began to search out his olfactory organs before coming up short. A chilled hand was resting the backs of its fingers against the exposed skin on Junpei’s arm.  


_Snake._  


The brush of silent consolation began to slowly run itself up and down Junpei’s upper arm. His tears gradually dried to stinging eyes encircled by red puffy lids. A shaky breath later and Clover’s face pinched with worry goaded the explanation, as insane as it seemed, from his lips.  


…  


“When I came out of it, you were dead and…” Brown eyes found the hazel eyes of the girl he had found laying in a puddle of her own blood in the very room he had walked through hours before with the man who he would later leave behind to a self-contained inferno. Junpei’s gaze was wracked with an agony so great it caused a twinge in Clover’s barely covered chest.  


Not that Light was paying attention, Junpei noticed. The blind man had sat back and was now holding his chin in a thoughtful silence. Clover tucked her feet back beneath herself and pulled one of the nearby comforters over her cross-legged lap, giving her hands something to do while she calmed down.  


“Well, you _did_ recall the code to that box Zero held me in, despite it being the wrong timeline… Perhaps you’re now recalling other details from those failed attempts.”  


“What?” The blind man shook his head and addressed the other two sitting close by.  


“The [Morphogenic Field] seemed to have acted like, say a telephone line between yourself, today, and the Akane Kurashiki of nine years ago.” Junpei and Clover nodded, the swishing of their hair alerting Light to their movements before he continued. “However, it seems like there was a short somewhere, allowing you to retrieve information from other phonecalls she made to you over different lines. Not unsimilar to picking up fuzzy radio stations broadcast from the next town over.”  


“Ah, so…” Junpei played with the idea like a tongue in a lost tooth socket.  


“So you have a lot of information in your head at the moment, and your brain is attempting to sift through what really happened. In this route, I mean. Because as you can see, both Clover and myself are quite vibrant, despite the ungodly hour of the morning.” Junpei’s eyes flicked up to the clock. _How did he **do** that?_  


Snake’s triumphant grin over having solved the dimension puzzle was endearing enough to relieve the tension in Clover’s shoulders.  


“But Light, why aren’t you having flashbacks like that? You’re a Receiver too…” Junpei looked between the siblings in surprise, recalling the story he was told somewhere along the lines of time of Light and the first experiment 9 years ago. The silver-haired man, a boy at the time, was put onboard the [Gigantic] while his sister was placed in the Q facility where Junpei and the rest fought through nine years later. Receivers went out to sea, and Transmitters stayed behind. Or, that was how it was supposed to work, anyway.  


Junpei was left shaking his head either way, because it would have made sense for Light to have picked up Akane’s Transmission just like he had. After all, the other man had had practice on picking up the field’s information and Junpei was just some random schmuck who had happened to know the most powerful and the most desperate Transmitter the world had ever known.  


Hadn’t he?  


Light was shaking his head slowly, thinking aloud. “No, that isn’t particularly how it works. Transmitters, even gifted Transmitters like yourself, Clover,” She beamed at his praise. “Can only put information into the field, where the Receiver with the best connection to both the field and the Transmitter will be able to take it out of the field. Junpei was Akane’s Reciever just like I am yours.” He smiled at his sister like sunlight through the dark clouds of their conversation. “Besides, Clover, despite all of the danger and the puzzles, you were never once able to Transmit to me while we were in Building Q, were you?”  


She looked shocked. “N-no, I wasn’t! Not that I tried…”  


“I call bullshit.” Light continued to smile sweetly as his sister fidgeted. “I know I looked for your signals while I was in that box, but there was [absolutely nothing to pick up].” Clover’s hands flew up to cover her mouth at this revelation.  


“But that’s- How did Junpei pick up on it then?” Junpei’s insides fell as the other man answered.  


“Because he’s the most powerful Receiver we’ve ever met. His ‘signals’ cancel ours out entirely.”  


_“WHAT.”_  


“It’s exactly as it sounds, Junpei.” Light shifted his bony ass slightly to relieve his leg as it fell asleep and continued. “You can’t pick up on other songs when the radio station you’re tuned into has a strong enough signal. It’s just like that.”  


“But then…why couldn’t I pick up on Clover’s Transmissions and you couldn’t get Akane’s?”  


“We were on a different wavelength entirely. We were AM and you two are FM. Although, if we’re shooting for accuracy it would really be the other way around, as more individuals can tap into Clover and myself’s connection to the field, as the experiment 9 years ago proved.” His face scrunched in concentration and distaste at the memories.  


“Well I think it’s romantic that you and Akane have a connection that only you two can use. It’s kind of cute. Very heroic.” As Clover tried to put a positive spin on their conversation, Light just scoffed and Junpei seriously thought he might become ill.  


“I just wish she hadn’t needed to.” He said quietly, smoothing the sheets below his toes as he pulled his knees up to his chin, balling up to protect himself from the thought.  


A small hand with hot pink nails covered his callused one as Light sighed and answered the unasked question.  


“I think we all share that sentiment.” His face looked older, once again, though Junpei realized this time that it wasn’t just the blind man who’s visage probably slipped into these aging emotions. He’d have to check out a mirror next time he was near one, with all his stress he was probably pushing 90 himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _SO YOU COULD SAY IT WAS THE 古川 AHAHAHAHAAAA im hilarious_


	3. Remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having survived the end of the forseeable world, Junpei does everything in his power to bring, well, light into him and his partner's bleak lives.

“Uh, Light?” The rugged man whipped off his goggles as he stepped into one of the few houses that remained standing in this part of town. The blind man turned his head to acknowledge the intruder before quirking an eyebrow at the man’s overly-cautious gait.  


“What is it, Junpei? You’re moving oddly.” Long, thin fingers, with grace as untouched by age as the silver hair that tickled his ears, readjusted his scarf before reaching out to give the other a sturdy hand over the rubble that protected their outpost from anything vaguely inhuman.  


Bare hands connected with thick workman’s glove with a pause that caused the former to raise his eyebrows yet again. The sheepish grin the other supplied the blind man colored his words in shades of amusement and apology that left no doubt as to the amount of trouble he was expecting to get into. Light Field shifted from one foot to the other before tugging his partner over the last of the hurdles that separated them and upon catching the filthy digger to his chest, easily discovered what he had been on about.  


The scavenger grinned in a way that deepened the lines around his eyes. Light knew that much without having to touch the sullied man any further, although his hand lingered on the other man’s upper arm while he spoke. “It looks like we’ll be having company.”  


Junpei Tenmyoji moved one arm into his companion’s torso, giving the bundle he’d been gripping a bit more support from the other man. Upon lending the strength of his whole arm, neither Junpei nor his amputee lover noticed the latter’s scarf slipping from his shoulder until it had landed in their arms, resting upon the weight they wordlessly shared.  


The baby sneezed at the introduction to the dust-laden scarf before Junpei tenderly tucked it back beneath his friend’s ear.  


“I’m not sure I want to know where this windfall fell from.” A laugh rumbled from the other man’s chest at his companion’s eternally condescending tone. At least some things would never change.  


Tenmyoji could tell, in the days that followed, that he had done the right thing. Not just by the child and by his own moral code, but by his heartsick companion. It was good to see the corners of those beloved unseeing eyes tilt up in a smile, sad as it might be these days, as he tended to the infant’s kicking feet and probing fingers. Junpei didn’t need to ask how he’d gotten so good with children. Mr. Field didn’t have to answer. They both knew.  


*  


“She would have loved him.” The pronoun came out of nowhere one day, as the two wound their way to one of the few patches of park that they deemed safe enough (and untainted enough) to let their progeny play in. Junpei turned his head to study the other man’s profile, but Light seemed peaceable enough. “Little Quark, you do know that the creature you’re chasing won’t just turn around and walk into your hands. Be careful.”  


Crossing his arms, Junpei followed the child with his eyes as he ran from one log to the next, hopping girders and laughing brightly, his mop of brown hair bouncing in the wind with each step. “Why do you call him that?”  


“Because as it turns out, molecules and atoms aren’t the smallest known matter compounds to exist, according to the quark theory.” A relaxed smile found its way onto the brunette’s face as he watched his best friend talk about matters that reminded him of just how far ahead of him the other man was in intelligence. He liked hearing Light talk, especially when he knew the answer to a question posed by Junpei. It animated him in some place deep down, and it was good to see that spark when it surfaced. It happened so rarely after Clover and Alice had…disappeared.  


They tried not to talk about that. They both knew, and it weighed on them with every breath, but for today, for now, Quark was happy and healthy, Light knew the answer to a question, and Junpei had lived long enough to watch them both bloom in their element beneath the clearing sky.  


“In a way, the quark particles are a lot like us, Junpei. They don’t exist alone.” A soft smile lit from within gave the other man pause in his explanation. The brunette didn’t push it as he swept some of his own whitening hair from his face. With a quiet exhalation of a laugh, he continued “In fact, they always come in threes.”  


Junpei liked the sound of that.


End file.
